Where graft is merely rampant

If only the president were more vigorous

MWAI KIBAKI, Kenya's president, is a passionate and handy golfer. But after a series of strokes, he appears to be losing his touch. Teeing off before a group of dignitaries recently, he missed the ball twice and then sent it slicing into the press cameras off the fairway.

Nearly two years ago, Mr Kibaki swept to power promising to curb the corruption that took root under his predecessors, Daniel arap Moi and Jomo Kenyatta, and which has made Kenyans steadily poorer for decades. The worry is that he is now too weak, old and ill to keep his pledge. “He can't even control his swing; how can you expect him to control the cabinet?” groans one of his ministers.

In the first few months after Mr Kibaki took over, officials did indeed behave more honestly. Whereas in 2002, Kenyan policemen demanded bribes during 96.9% of encounters with the public, last year the figure was only 82.1%, according to a survey by Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog. And immigration officials improved their score from 94.3% to 89.6%.

In TI's latest league table, corruption in Kenya was found to have improved from “highly acute” to merely “rampant”, prompting local newspapers to demand to know why foreign companies were not flocking back to set up new ventures in Kenya.

The answer is that “rampant” is not quite good enough. Kenya is still one of the most corrupt countries in the world, according to TI. Following the example of Mr Moi's cronies, too many of the new ruling elite are out to get rich, rather than govern. Debates in parliament are often abandoned because of poor attendance. But this has not stopped Kenyan MPs from awarding themselves a whopping average of $169,625 a year in salary and allowances, which mostly do not have to be accounted for.

The average Kenyan income is a more modest $400 a year, and many city-dwellers are feeling poorer thanks to the agriculture minister's efforts to help fellow farmers by using state funds to bid up the wholesale price of maize.

There is nothing illegal about this, but Kenyans who don't grow their own are now paying 50% more for their staple food than they were a year ago, and double the world price, says Robert Shaw, a local economist. Consumer spending is shrinking, and inflation is set to rocket. The economic consequences, says Mr Shaw, could be catastrophic.

New patronage networks are replacing the old ones, as the well-connected appoint their chums and relatives to plum public posts. Besides making government more costly and less effective, this also makes parliament reluctant to privatise dysfunctional state-owned firms. This shackles the economy. For example, Kenyan firms move goods by road because the state-owned railways, though cheaper, invariably deliver late, if at all.

With Mr Kibaki enfeebled, economic and political reforms have stuttered. A new constitution, in the works for seven years, remains on hold. It would curtail the powers of the president and redistribute them more fairly across government. Kenyans, tired of greed and corruption in high places, are largely for it. Kenya's greedy and corrupt government is not.

Is Kenya worse off than it was under Mr Moi? Probably not. Tourism has begun to recover and the government has promised to end the culture of impunity for the powerful. A few minor figures from the old regime have been prosecuted, for example, and on December 10th the government announced that it had started to reclaim millions of hectares of land that were improperly acquired by Mr Moi and his cronies. The land minister, Amos Kimunya, promised a new tribunal to revoke ill-gotten titles and restore land to its rightful owners.

Well and good, but this sounds like ending impunity for the previously powerful. What about the current lot? Serving ministers involved in corruption scandals both new and old have gone unpunished, although some dubious government tenders have been cancelled after they were exposed in the local press.

Some politicians use their office as a shield to allow them to pursue less honourable sidelines. A stash of cocaine has been found in the boot of an assistant minister's car, while other colleagues are said to run narcotics networks in the port city of Mombasa. This week, Kenyan police made their biggest-ever drugs bust, seizing cocaine worth an estimated $65m.

On the plus side, however, Kenyans are no longer as scared of their rulers as they used to be. An MP who allegedly threatened the patrons of a golf club bar with a gun was recently banned from the club, something that would never have happened in the bad old days.